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Comment by colesantiago | Hacker News Reader

Why do we have this scarcity mindset of AI taking away jobs?

Sure some jobs may go.

But ultimately there will certainly be new jobs created by AI that in turn will make an abundant future for all of us.

Quote from Max Tegmark book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: “In his 2007 book Farewell to Alms, the Scottish- American economist Gregory Clark points out that we can learn a thing or two about our future job prospects by comparing notes with our equine friends. Imagine two horses looking at an early automobile in the year 1900 and pondering their future.

  “I’m worried about technological unemployment.”
  “Neigh, neigh, don’t be a Luddite: our ancestors said the same thing when steam engines took our industry jobs and trains took our jobs pulling stage coaches. But we have more jobs than ever today, and they’re better too: I’d much rather pull a light carriage through town than spend all day walking in circles to power a stupid mine-shaft pump.”
  “But what if this internal combustion engine thing really takes off?”
  “I’m sure there’ll be new new jobs for horses that we haven’t yet imagined. That’s what’s always happened before, like with the invention of the wheel and the plow.”

Alas, those not-yet-imagined new jobs for horses never arrived. No-longer- needed horses were slaughtered and not replaced, causing the U.S. equine population to collapse from about 26 million in 1915 to about 3 million in 1960. As mechanical muscles made horses redundant, will mechanical minds do the same to humans?"...

> But ultimately there will certainly be new jobs created by AI that in turn will make an abundant future for all of us.

And what if there aren't? Hope is not a strategy.

Why not? When we all started our careers, whenever that may be, we looked at the world, chose a path, and learned the skills to walk it. Changing paths is the same process. Look at the world, then choose, learn, and walk. Hope is completely appropriate because it embraces that freedom to adapt to whatever changes may come.

Because 60 percent of Americans already don't generate enough income to meet their basic needs.

Americans are losing spending power, say researchers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270120 - June 2025

Most Americans don't earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-living-income-quality-o...

https://lisep.org/mql

Sounds like a problem to be fixed, not a reality to feel hopelessly stuck in. Change is challenging in the current environment, to be sure, but that is all the more reason to find a way to take actions that will invoke change.

Not every problem is fixed peacefully. Remember the French in 1789.

>Changing paths is the same process. Look at the world, then choose, learn, and walk

Oh good so after spending $40k on my education to be a valuable software engineer and build things I get to spend another $40k on some sort of retraining to be one of the ever shrinking professionals who make any money in the US.

What a great outlook that is. I guess I'll put off owning anything for another 20 years? Maybe by the time I'm 50 the world will stop throwing "Once in a generation" events at me and I can have a hope of actually building a life with my family.

A lot of us are going to end up driving ubers and delivering takeout to the 5% of the US that makes all the money. They only have so many needs to serve so plenty will just starve.

AI gets the investment it does explicitly because their intention is to not pay humans anything ever again. There's not going to be new jobs to go to.

The problem is it will take years for the jobs to come back and a lot of people don't have years of liquidity.

If every developer is now 10x more productive, most businesses will be able to downsize until they start to be outcompeted by competitors who decided to build 10x better products rather than downsizing. The current norm is to keep the same productivity and shrink the workforce outside of small startups.

"10x more productive" does not imply "10x better products"

My expectation is more crap produced faster, and/or by fewer people.

"Good enough!"

That's been the trajectory of software product development for the past twenty years, at least.

Well some companies decide to produce more as well, this happens in every industry, once they can get more efficient for the same price, they see it as an opportunity to produce more.

If every developer is 10x more productive, that means the total addressable market just got that much larger!

Current AI is clearly not going to replace everyone.

It will certainly reduce low-level clerical work, so plenty of jobs will, are already, going, but new jobs will of course be created.

But what if we get actual AI? All bets are off then. The only jobs left will be very specifically human jobs. The oldest profession, probably.

Where's the scarcity mindset in the OP's question? If it's as you say and some jobs disappear but others grow, the OP's question is even more relevant than ever.

Instead of high paid western jobs, the new jobs could be created somewhere in India. Are you ok to have $20k annual salary?

What about intellectual property and cultural nuances. I can think of many jobs that can't be outsourced because of this

AI has pretty much shown that Intellectual Property is a sham

Looxuray! Mid-senior devs on <$10kpa here.

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